


Trade All My Tomorrows

by whetherwoman



Category: Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Genre: Angst, Bechdel Test Pass, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, First Kiss, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Suicidal Thoughts, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 09:46:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2808047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whetherwoman/pseuds/whetherwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She stops counting after 300 days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trade All My Tomorrows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lorata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorata/gifts).



She reaches out sleepily, and finds the sheets cool to the touch, no one there. Oh, she thinks. Hendricks is dead. Hendricks is dead, again, still. Oh god, Hendricks is dead. This is too much, too hard—I’ll reset.

She freezes, finger on the trigger, staring into the dark.

* * *

“Usually you kill me.”

She laughs in spite of herself. Of course—why wouldn’t she kill him. Every time she kills Cage, it’s a blessing. He doesn’t realize it, of course. She watches the expression of resignation on his face with a burst of white-hot envy, and pulls the trigger on her past self.

* * *

She stops counting after 300 days. Maybe it’s because it doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t care. Maybe it’s because she’s simply stopped thinking of time in terms of days at all. What she remembers, after that, are the firsts. The first time a soldier crosses himself after she blasts through a dozen mimics. The first time she has a vision of the Omega.

The first time she gets dissected.

After she loses the—after she—afterwards, one of the things she finds difficult is how many firsts there are. Every second, every minute happens to her for the first time. It’s overwhelming.

* * *

She takes a day off, once, curls up in the corner of a particular warehouse that no one on this particular day ever visits, and reads _Slaughterhouse-Five_. She read it years ago, as a child, and remembers being amused. She’s not laughing now. She hasn’t really come unstuck in time like Billy Pilgrim—if anything she is more stuck than anyone has ever been. But she feels unstuck, unmoored. It’s a metaphor, she supposes, the best way for the author to describe war and how even in a dark quiet warehouse the explosions and fire and death feel more real than the still, musty air around her and cold concrete underneath her.

Even without a watch, she knows what time it is when Hendricks dies, again, always. She shivers a little, then shoots herself.

She doesn’t take another day off.

* * *

Embarrassingly, it takes her 53 days to kiss Hendricks. It honestly doesn’t occur to her for the first 52 days. She is trying to figure out what was going on, trying not to die, trying to do it right, again and again and again—trying to suppress the inkling that this will drive her insane sooner or later and almost definitely sooner.

On the 53rd day she kisses Hendricks, almost by accident. It is five minutes before Hendricks dies, and Rita is staring at the one wisp of hair that has escaped her helmet, that always escapes her helmet. It is red-gold and curls, just a little, just at the end, and it is two minutes before Hendricks dies. It is 45 seconds before Hendricks dies and Rita lunges forwards and kisses her, too hard, too fast, half on her mouth and half on her chin. It is 30 seconds before Hendricks dies and her mouth is open and red and she is looking at Rita, surprised, pleased, happy. It is 10 seconds before Hendricks dies and Hendricks is smiling at her and Hendricks is dead.

On the 54th day she kisses Hendricks first thing, and gets to see the same surprised smile for almost 8 hours before Hendricks dies again.

* * *

Hendricks dies at 16:03. Sometimes it’s by airship explosion, or suit malfunction, or friendly fire. Usually it’s by mimic. It’s always in battle. Rita doesn’t know when she realized it was the same time every day. She doesn’t remember ever checking a clock, just getting tenser and tenser every day as the time approaches.

She tries sticking to Hendricks’ side. She tries avoiding Hendricks entirely. Once she locks Hendricks inside a suit storage unit. Hendricks picks the lock, which Rita discovers when she shows up next to Rita at 16:01, in time for a mimic to burst out of the sod behind them and rip Hendricks in half.

* * *

Rita wonders, once, whether she only kissed Hendricks because she had nothing to lose. That’s the kind of thought she puts aside quickly, though. It’s less than useless. She had nothing to lose, and she kissed Hendricks, and there’s no point in speculating whether or how they were connected. 

She still has nothing to lose, though. And she still kisses Hendricks. Sometimes first thing in the day, first chance she gets. Sometimes last thing, when she can’t stand it any more, when the seconds are ticking down in her head. She learns everything there is to know about her in seconds and minutes and hours at a time, learns her middle name and her favorite song, learns the sound she makes when Rita touches her neck with calloused fingertips, learns how long she has wanted Rita to kiss her. 

She wonders, once, just once, whether Hendricks would ever kiss her, wouldn’t wait for Rita to make the first move. That’s the kind of thought she puts away quickly, though. It’s less than useless. She only gets one day with Hendricks, and she’s not going to waste it waiting.

So, again and again and again, she learns that Hendricks loves her. Again and again she sees the expression on her face when she realizes Rita loves her. She kisses her a hundred times, in a hundred ways. And she never gets more than one day with her.

* * *

Once, on one of the days where Rita kisses Hendricks early in the day, they almost leave. Rita tries something different and before she kisses her, she haltingly, clumsily, tells her she loves her. It is sweet to see the surprised smile before she kisses it, and Hendricks is unexpectedly pliable. Rita spares a second, as her vest hits the floor, to be glad she pulled Hendricks into an out of the way warehouse, not the barracks or mess or any of the other places they’ve kissed before.

“I can hotwire a moped,” Hendricks murmurs between kisses, deft fingers unzipping and unbuttoning.

“Yes?” says Rita. “That’s—is that good?” She is paying far more attention to the inch of skin under Hendricks’ uniform collar than she is to the conversation.

“It is,” Hendricks says. “There’s a moped in the corner right there. We could be a hundred miles away by dinnertime.”

As the words sink in, Rita stills. “Leave?” She pulls back. “I’m a soldier, Hendricks. I’m not walking away.”

Hendricks shrugs philosophically, taking the opportunity to completely shed her shirt. Rita’s mouth goes dry. “If you did, I’d hate to see you go but love to watch you leave,” Hendricks says, wiggling her eyebrows, and sweeps Rita’s feet out from under her with a well placed leg, toppling them both to the ground. 

“Call me Rose,” she says, and licks the tip of Rita’s nose, “when I’m this close to you.”

Later, at 16:03, Rita wonders. Just once.

* * *

The relief she feels when Cage shoots the mimic without even looking and she realizes what’s going on, what must be going on. The weight of her blade falls from her hand and even the too-familiar flash of panic and too much knowledge on his face doesn’t keep her from feeling lighter. Some future version of her will be able to find and kill the fucking Omega, she has no doubt of that. So right here, right now—she stops.


End file.
